Water environmental stress, rebound effect, and economic growth of China’s textile industry

The rapid development of China’s textile industry (TI) has led to severe water environmental stress. Water environmental stress of China’s TI mainly comes from large quantities of discharged wastewater and chemical oxygen demand (COD). The sustainable development of the TI is realized to achieve the decoupling between economic growth and water environmental stress. This study analyzes the decoupling elasticity results from wastewater discharge and COD discharge, respectively. Decoupling results show that TI’s wastewater has strong decoupling from economic growth for three years (2002, 2013–2014) while COD has strong decoupling for six years (2002–2003, 2008, 2010, 2013–2014). The paper further calculates the decoupling elasticity results of the TI’s three sub-sectors (manufacture of textile sector, manufacture of textile wearing and apparel sector, and manufacture of chemical fibers (MCF) sector), and calculates the factors that affect wastewater discharge. The decrement and rebound effects of wastewater discharge are analyzed based on calculated results. Decomposition results show that the scale factor is the most significant contributor to wastewater discharge, the intensity factor inhibits wastewater discharge, and the effect of the structure factor is not evident. The decrement effect of TI increases yearly, but the rebound effect shows that the absolute amount of wastewater discharge also increases. The rebound effect has declined since 2012. In the three sub-sectors, MCF’s decrement effect is the strongest, and its rebound effect is the weakest, which indicate that MCF is the biggest contributor to the discharge reduction of China’s TI.

Methodological Investigation of Vibration Effects on Performance of Three Tasks

Twenty young Navy enlisted male volunteers were first rehearsed and then tested before, during, and after whole-body vibration. Fourteen were tested only at 8 Hz, and six were tested at 8 Hz/0.21 g rms, 16 Hz/0.43 g rms and 32 Hz/0.85 g rms, using three paper-and-pencil tasks involving visual, motor, and cognitive skills. The tasks were “Spoke”, a speed of tapping test; “Aiming”, a test of fine motor coordination; and “Coding”, involving mental computation. Results showed an approximately equal decrement effect across conditions in the Spoke and Coding (but not Aiming) tests that conforms with the frequency function embodied in the current international standard (ISO 2631:1978) on human exposure to vibration; but that a modicum of previous vibration experience may be necessary before reliable data are obtained in this kind of testing. Implications for methodology and for the application of the current standard are briefly discussed.